Final Fantasy 14's third annual Fan Festival took place in Tokyo over the weekend, and while there were a few surprises, including an undetermined release date for Dawntrail, female Hrothgar, the artistic class Pictomancers, and the Warrior of Light wondering what the hell she's doing on her summer vacation We got to see a lot of great stuff, including a weird cyberpunk world that makes you wonder what the hell the Warriors of Light are up to on their summer vacation.
But of all that news, somehow the biggest surprise of the weekend was not that. No, it was something much stranger and more sinister. One of the most talked about things was that director and producer Naoki Yoshida showed up to the finals of the festival's PvP tournament in a suit. Shirt, blazer, tie.
It sounds like nothing, but it was an uncharacteristic appearance for Yoshida, known in the community as "Yoshi P." At Dawntrail's expansion reveal, he showed up wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt. At the October fan festival, he cosplayed as a Viper, the first class to be revealed in the expansion. He often wears designer hoodies, T-shirts, jeans, and tons of jewelry; to see Yoshi-P dressed as a businessman is definitely a fashion whiplash.
If Yoshi-P were to dress up as anything smart, it would be PvP. It is well known at this point that he loves PvP mode. He was frequently seen playing PvP mode on the Japanese servers, where his main class was heavily memed with eyebrow-raising buffs until he dropped the change and apologized. He was also seen sitting on the floor checking out a PvP tournament at a North American fan festival, going so far as to ask people not to bother him while he was watching.
The formal Yoshida is still quite the jumpscare, and his fanbase is hard to ignore on Twitter. One user tweeted, "Are they in the middle of a skit or is this the first time in my life I've seen this guy in a suit," before following up with, "Oh it's pvp, now it all makes sense." One user said, "Clark Kent wearing glasses, a suit, and combing his hair is impossible until it happens in real life," while another tweeted, "Maybe Clark Kent is a legit disguise."
Certainly a new look for Yoshida - even his hair was noticeably different this weekend from his usual spiky boy band haircut - a suited Naoki Yoshida will no doubt be in my dreams for the foreseeable future.
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